Loving the Imperfect, Garden and All

Post 69

I talk about wholeness a lot on this blog, but rarely about some of the unpleasant parts of wholeness. So here--like dark clouds on a sunny day-- is a love screed affirming, deepening, some of what I have left out.

Sometimes--I really hate to garden. It's cold, my bones ache, it's dirty, I want to be inside. I want to be in bed. You can't throw your back out in bed (well, at least it's not likely at my age.)

Do you know how much work  a garden is? Even a low-work garden? How much dull, repetitive work there is? Work that needs to be done regardless of the weather. And it's not like I don't already have a job.

I do not care if it's good for me. I am getting no pleasure from it. And there is still more work to do. And more. How will I ever get it done? Not as young as I used to be. What was I thinking? What Was I Thinking?

Yes, sometimes that is what it feels like. Maybe not often, but sometimes. To pretend otherwise is to  cheapen reality.

But even when gardening feels like drudgery, there can remain three important things: hope, faith and love.  Nothing much this side of Heaven comes without effort. There are always good days and bad days. Anything worth doing looks impossible if you look at it in totality, but if you just put one foot in front of the the other, sooner or later it gets done.



I have found that when I work out of love the difficult bits are still difficult, but not impossible. Where as if I work out of more mixed motives, I have a harder time when I hit the difficult stuff. And it helps to assume and accept that there will be difficult stuff. Even in a garden.

To embrace reality means to accept it. I'm not one of those who thinks we completely construct our own reality through our attitudes and thought processes. But I do think our thought processes can make a difference to our behaviors, which reverberate through reality. To have faith and hope means to go on. To try to do good where you can. To forgive. To ask to be forgiven. To be open to grace.

Cause at some point the weather turns, your bones stop aching and this happens--

 

A foretaste, perhaps, of a truer being.

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All the photos in this post are of Erdenheim Farms, except for the last, which is of Rittenhouse Town.

Spring with Antifreeze

 Post 68


So how can things bloom one day, be frosted with snow the next, and then bloom the day after?

That is the question I have been asking myself as I have watched snowdrops, croci, Lenten Rose and squill thrive in our changeble climate.




Somehow, there is an antifreeze protein in some plants that keeps ice from forming within plant cells. It's not the ice on plants that kills them, it's the ice inside. So some plants stave off inner cell freeze by expelling water, while others form ice on the outside of the plant to protect the inside. I think. It is all pretty complicated. Complicated enough for the government to be doing a study on plant anti-freeze that includes Lenten roses and vinca.

 
This year I took the old leaves off my Lenten roses early. These plants have been snowed on at least three times, and have endured many nights of freeze. Yet they thrive. So the advice in books is true, you can cut the old leaves off in winter without damaging the spring buds.

And though it has been a cold spring so far, it is almost daff time, which is the unofficial start of spring for me. They are already in bloom a half zone away--which is how I think of the heatsink of Center City. But the ones in my yard are almost poppin.

 

One of the more interesting changes this cold spring has brought has been on the colors of this evergreen foliage.

I'm not sure what this evergreen is-- it is small, greyish and bought from a box store. This time of year though it shows a subtle psychedelia of color.

I can find tones of green, lavender, mauve and brown in what is considered a common, boring grey-green plant.

Which is partly why I have so missed the garden this winter. I miss the constant small surprises and delight that working in the garden brings.

 

Growing at The Flower Show

Post 67

Would I ever be so silly as to pose with a Guard? Of course not-
not unless drunk, or rather, drunk with the scents, sights and sounds of this year's Flower Show. (Do not miss the hourly video that plays across the clock's face. Do not.)

 

 

And the plants were pretty darn good too.

Above  is a combination I have never seen before but works: stone, Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, and the reddest of red English daisies. It's like the daisies are applauding the tree's movements. Clap your petals.

The common luxuriness of English cottage garden style was in evidence. As in the pic above  -- white Cosmo, the mallow that goes violet to purple and tall agaratum.

                                                                                                                                                    And isn't this the bees' knee's? Talk about  contrasts to make harmony.                                                                              A huge amount of what I have learned about gardening I learned at the Flower Show -- by just looking.                                                                                                                            It is easy to copy things, but unless you understand the principles behind the original, you will not copy well. You'll just get pastiche

I do not like to copy, but to understand and adapt. So I look and ask questions. From my answers grows my style. If I were to just steal or appropriate, I'd bypass growth. And growing a garden well means growing yourself as well.

Here I pause, my eye arrested by the contrasts of color and texture.

And hows this for a roar of color?  This bookcase of plants would only look right in the Tropics or under the too bright overheads of the Convention Center.

And maybe because I've been doing photography all Winter, I notice I am more drawn to strong, simple form that I used to be. Below is one of my favorite plants I saw.

I

It's like a male form of seafan coral.  And now, on to some pitcher plants next to granny bonnet daffs.

Behold the hills and vales of this lusious succulent.

These roots could be fruits--or are they?

This world is an amazing place and the plant life on it one of the many things that  makes it so amazing.

The Flower Show is a blast because it exposes you to all sorts of groovy new things, things you had not imagined existed.

But you find out they do, and with that knowledge and understanding your own imagination and sense of possibility grows.

And becomes a bit more amazing as well.

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A short shout-out to Daniel Hogg who came all the way from the mists of Cornwall to tell tall tales (well--they couldn't all be true, ... could they?) of the fabled Lost Gardens of Heligan

 

To the Jane Austen Society for their award-winning display

And to this, the most lovely clematis I think I have ever seen, now slightly wilted, but still somehow unearthly in its not-quite white beauty.

And last of all, some wisdom

And a sign at the bottom of the barrow.

                                                                         

Wissahickon Style XV; Old Style Green Roofs

Post 66

Between now and the Flower Show there is time for one more winter post.

 

So--a short look on the local phenomena of moss on roofs.  It is something I never saw growing up in New York City and the end of Long Island. 

 

But it is plentiful around here. The height of the trees with their dense shade, the greater humidity, the prevalence of cedar shake or slate roofs, I'm not sure what produces it, but it is all around.

Green roofs before green roofs were cool. It is a lovely detail and adds to the organic feeling of the local architecture, as if yes, somehow the houses just grew out of the stone, wood and earth.

Google the subject and you will find a bunch of pages on how to remove the moss, and not much about how to grow it. There is the fear that it will loosen the shakes or impede runoff. I did not find data that it actually does so.

And it does look great-- especially in winter.

Though  it is now officially latest winter--for  the snowdrops have begun.